Will controversial hepatitis C drug continue its blockbuster sales?

Gilead Sciences’ $1,000-a-day hepatitis C pill is facing a firestorm of criticism from insurers and lawmakers, but none of those obstacles are likely to stop the Foster City company from reporting blockbuster revenues during the second quarter today.

In the first quarter, the drug, Sovaldi, raked in a record-setting $2.3 billion in sales, a number that crushed analysts’ expectations. For the second quarter, some analysts are estimating sales as high as $2.98 billion for Sovaldi alone — and they may well be surprised again. Sovaldi costs $84,000 for a standard 12 weeks of treatment.

It’s been an eventful few months for the company, which has tried to justify Sovaldi’s cost by arguing that curing the disease in 12 or 24 weeks is cheaper in the long-run compared to traditional treatments, which last about a year and have lower cure rates than Sovaldi, which can cure more than 90 percent of patients with the most common form of hepatitis C. Sovaldi is also a deal, the company argues, compared to treating advanced complications like liver cancer or a liver transplant.

Payers who are helping cover or covering the cost of the drug disagree, as do lawmakers. Express-Scripts Holding Co., the nation’s largest pharmacy benefits manager, is assembling a coalition of payers that intend to boycott Sovaldi once a competing hepatitis C drug comes on the market in a year or so. Last week, the company released an analysis that estimated that the cost of providing Sovaldi and its required accompanying medication, ribavirin, to Medicaid enrollees and prisoners would be $55 billion in taxpayer dollars. In a poll conducted this month of more than 2,000 people by the National Coalition on Health Care, 80 percent said Sovaldi’s price was “unacceptable and jeopardizes the very innovation that is a hallmark of the American health care system.”

The U.S. Senate recently asked Gilead to explain how it priced Sovaldi and how it bought the drug from another company, Pharmasset, for $11 billion in 2012. Back in March, California Rep. Henry A. Waxman and other U.S. representatives also expressed concern to Gilead about Sovaldi’s price. This morning, Waxman will release a report detailing policy options to lower Medicare drug costs, citing worries that Sovaldi and other specialty drugs will be unaffordable.

The earnings announcement comes on the same day Gilead received a separate stroke of good fortune, unrelated to Sovaldi. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday it has approved Zydelig to treat three types of blood cancers in patients whose disease has returned: chronic lymphocytic leukemia; follicular B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma and small lymphocytic lymphoma.

Zydelig, whose generic name is idelalisib, is supposed to be used in patients who have previously been treated with at least two therapies in the cases of relapsed follicular B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma and relapsed small lymphocytic lymphoma. It will cost $7,200 a month.